Thirty Palestinians held in Israeli custody embarked on a hunger strike from last Sunday to protest their indefinite detention.
“The strike aims to fulfil the demands of the detainees” for ending their administrative detention in Ofer prison west of Ramallah, Qadura Fares, the head of the Palestinian Prisoner Society NGO, told a press conference.
All the detainees are cadres of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
The Prison Branch of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine issued a statement saying that “These 30 prisoners have spent nearly 200 years in administrative detention taken together. Two hundred years of captivity without charge or trial at the whim of the occupation intelligence officers….hundreds of years, during which the occupation prevented us from embracing our families or seeing our children as they were born or growing up. We never celebrated their birthdays, we did not accompany them on their first school day. We did not share the memories of their graduation celebration, and the intelligence officers then come to tell us, ‘We will deprive you of the joy of the marriage of your sons and daughters.’ Two hundred years in which we lost fathers, mothers and brothers, and our wives learned that they had married a ghost living in the darkness of the cells at the request of a fascist jailer.”
Fares expected more Palestinian detainees to join the hunger strike in coming days.
The policy of administrative detention allows Israeli authorities to detain anyone for six months without charge or trial, which can be extended indefinitely.
According to Palestinian figures, there are around 4,650 Palestinian detainees languishing in Israeli jails, including at least 780 held without charge or trial.
For years, Palestinians within Israeli prison walls have used these protests to procure better living conditions and terminate indefinite detentions.
More than 70 organizations engaged in support of the international month of action for the release of Georges Abdallah.,from September 22nd to October 22nd.
Since the very beginning of the 1970s, extinguishing the Palestinian revolution has been the agenda of the imperialist forces and their regional reactionary trustees.”Wars and killings have been a routine feature since then and the popular masses have coped with the available means and capabilities. The revolutionary struggle was in a plateaued state ,meandering between one trend seeking endless negotiations and concessions at all costs, and the other trend attaching relentlessly waging armed resistance . Numerous battles have been waged, some lost, others won, but overall and in spite of grave losses and errors, the popular masses have been able to consolidate the resistance .
As part of the international month of action for the liberation of Georges Abdallah, the Unity Campaign organized a rally on September 30th in front of the exit of the Ménilmontant metro.
The next initiative of the United Campaign will be a second rally in Menilmontant, next Friday, October 7, starting at 6 pm, to demand the release of Georges. A most impactful rally in the framework of the month for the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah,in Paris,3 days ago.
In Berlin a powerful protest was held in solidarity with the brave prisoners, in support of their heroic hunger strike and against the unjust arrests and to their unflinching resistance in confronting the fascist Zionist racists .
After 38 years of detention and while he has been released since 1999, Georges Abdallah continues relentlessly continues his political fight, while the mobilization for his release is expanding ,intensifying year after year not only nationally but also abroad. This systematic support is led in a most diverse range, on all fronts, expressing full solidarity.
It is positive that a tempo has been built up galvanising people to confront the nefarious actions of Israel and identify Zionism as manifestation of the wave of fascism, prevailing in the world today..
Harsh Thakor is freelance journalist who covers mass movements and studies anti-imperialist struggles
